Is Iran Building A Nuclear Weapon? Global Watchdog Chief Says...

Iran has accumulated a vast amount of enriched uranium, which is "very, very close" to weapon grade, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Mariano Grossi told NDTV during the ongoing World Economic Forum Summit in Davos.

As Iran-Israel tensions continue with no end in sight, Mr Grossi said the global nuclear watchdog doesn't have evidence that Tehran is building a nuclear weapon. At the same time, he added that the country is not fully cooperating in offering clarity about its past and present activities. "We are not inspecting at the levels or at the places that we believe we should be inspecting," he said.

Mr Grossi said that with Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, a regime change could likely bring stability to a "very volatile situation" in the Middle East.

A month ago, Mr Grossi had visited Iran and held talks with the spokesperson for Tehran's state atomic energy agency Behrouz Kamalvandi to resolve long-standing issues with his agency over its nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency head has for months sought progress with Iran on issues including a push for more monitoring cooperation at nuclear sites and an explanation of uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

Tehran is enriching uranium to up to 60 percent fissile purity, close to the roughly 90 percent required for a nuclear bomb, as per Reuters. But Iran has long denied any nuclear-bomb ambitions, saying it is enriching uranium for civilian energy uses only. Iran stepped up nuclear activity since 2019, after Trump during his first term abandoned a 2015 deal Iran had reached with world powers, under which it curbed enrichment, and restored tough US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Iran's work on enrichment has been seen by the West as a disguised effort to develop nuclear weapons capability.

In an interview on the sidelines of Davos 2025, Mr Grossi was also asked how safe India's nuclear reactors are. ''Absolutely safe. India applies to its civilian nuclear programme the highest levels of internationally agreed and IAEA established nuclear safety standards and security guidance,'' he told NDTV.

The IAEA chief also said there were several occasions when the watchdog feared a nuclear accident in Ukraine. "Zaporizhzia is right in the middle, on the frontline, extremely fragile. It has been subject to shelling, and more frequently, blackouts. This means loss of cooling function might have led to a nuclear accident. We are counting it by the day when we have situations like this. It is one of the biggest challenges that IAEA faces," he said.